As with many who post on this sensitive topic, your ignorance of research is remarkable, considering the passion of your opinion.
While I recognize that it’s human nature to allow one’s personal paradigm to color what one reads and does not read, or accepts and does not accept, in a discussion of the scientific evidence it does help to read even those things your paradigm does not want to entertain. At the least it will enable you to understand both sides of a position rather than simply assuming the opposite position is “laughable.” We did a recent thread on this here in the SDMB; feel free to peruse it for details before you make an even bigger mockery of your grasp of the topic. I linked to the original Science article there.
It might also increase the credulity with which your opinion is received.
Nobody is actually supporting a position OPPOSITE yours. That is, nobody here is claiming that it has been definitively shown that test score differences among racial groups are not significantly affected by genetic factors.
That’s because the causes of test score differences among racial groups are not yet scientifically understood. You are lying when you claim that science has conclusively shown that the differences are genetic, and we would be lying if we claimed that science has conclusively shown that the differences are not genetic.
What we have posted lots of non-crap evidence for is the position that your position is not conclusively supported by science.
As I cited in a previous post, some racial differences in test scores have not proved immutable, even over such a short period as the past few decades.
And even the fact that certain other test scores, like the SAT’s and MCAT’s, haven’t shown reduction in differences over the past few decades does not constitute any kind of proof that they are actually “immutable”.
In short, Chief, you have arbitrarily cherry-picked certain evidence that supports your position, arbitrarily decided to consider your favored evidence as conclusive proof, and arbitrarily decided that no evidence that doesn’t support your position is “worthwhile”. Given that, it’s not surprising that you can’t understand why your stubborn insistence that your position is correct is ridiculous and unsupported.
I believe I was simply presenting the admixture of the Neandertal genome into (only) non-sub-saharan populations as a refutation to the idea that we are all somehow one approximately same family, with branches equally descended from the same trunk.
The Neandertal admixture found (so far) in only Eurasion populations adds credence to the notion that when humans spread out of Africa they had exposure to gene pools distinct from gene pools within populations in sub-saharan Africa. While this would not necessarily be the only means of acquisition of new genes, I’m not presenting it here as a proof case for how Eurasians got smarter. I’m presenting it here as an example of how race differences between Eurasians and sub-saharan Africans are not simply cultural–there are biologic differences.
And apparently too dumb to realize that the NYT registration to access the link I previously posted is free, rather than requiring a paid NYT subscription.
Would you agree there is less sensitivity on the part of us middle tier whites, though? I don’t think I’m personally very sensitive about what gene pool I was born to, and who else’s gene pool averages better at something…of course I admit to being generally insensitive, so I may be an exception. I don’t even care what group you put me in…
Many studies I have show asian superiority in performance on quantitative sciences, and it doesn’t bug me. It’s a biologic (ok; ok; Kimstu–possibly biological–curiosity). It has nothing to do with me personally, or my personal performance. I don’t get up in arms if west african blacks are shown to be better at basketball, asians are better at calculus and the Kalenji leave my group’s fat asses in the dust marathoning. The more narrowly you define a population, the easier it’s going to be show superiority in something.
Because so much of our ability to perform is genetically-based, a more tightly-defined group is going to have a higher prevalence of genes coding for a particular skillset. It wouldn’t be hard to show the Mbuti aren’t going to beat out the rest of the West Africans at basketball, and why would the Mbuti care?
Why would I care? There’s no personal prize for belonging to a Group and no accomplishment in being born to a genetic pool…what I’m looking for, at least, is an explanation of why the world is as it is, and not a chest ribbon for World’s Best Race.
Nope. As tomndebb noted, most of us vigorously contesting your excessively confident claims about genetic causes of racial differences are white ourselves. I think what most of the people who disagree with you are “sensitive” about is not potentially insulting implications of inferiority, but rather flagrant abuse of science.
I agree with this attitude. I don’t care if my particular genetic makeup gives me a certain advantage in some cognitive areas and a certain disadvantage in others. (I already know that my particular genetic makeup gives me certain advantages and disadvantages in other areas anyway, e.g. by making me short.)
I’m not going to get all disappointed if it’s scientifically demonstrated that different racial groups have average differences in intelligence. And I’ve encountered enough counterexamples, including some brilliant black mathematicians and many math-phobic Jewish and Asian students, to know that even a genetically-based overall racial difference is going to be swamped by individual variation.
What I want to see on this issue is not comforting reassurance about some egalitarian ideal (or, conversely, flattering assurances of my own superiority), but rather clear-headed understanding of the relevant science.
Thanks for the heads up. Just ordered the book off Amazon for my perusal and files.
I skimmed through the article and will read the book carefully. I didn’t see much we have not hashed through: black-white scores have proved resistant to all efforts to eliminate them so far; no genes concretely identified to explain this; perhaps “cultural” explanations are the reason; ordinary reasons commonly advanced such as parental wealth are not the reason; kids raised in better homes do better; gaps widen in adolescence (they attribute this to “cultural” pressures without providing any alternate hypothesis such as the effect of genes on development in adolescence) …etc.
I did not find support for the two comments I thought you made which were the reason I asked for the link:
Score performance is unchanged according to the proportion of “black” heritage.
Score differences are narrowing. (The article says this, but unless I get a cite from the book or you, it is saying it incorrectly. I have given you a cite for specific scores showing that in recent years, the gap is not narrowing. It would, of course, have narrowed since the first part of the last century when there was no effort to equalize educational opportunity)
This thread was begun by Even Sven; hardly an icon for claiming that blacks are inferior. She appears to be much more in the camp of the sensitive but naively altruistic individual wanting to triumph egalitarianism without much rigor for researching the topic.
Part of the problem is the shorthand required to avoid making every post a pages-long tedium.
My own position is very simple: Comparison groups that outperform can be reasonably inferred to have better genes supporting that outperformance where nurturing influences can be accounted for.
That our society has decided “black” and “white” are important groupings is irritating to me, but there is not way around it, and as I’ve mentioned before, the “black” group is at least as much culpable in promoting those two groupings. In particular, leveling a charge of “racism” against blacks opens up the door to examine alternate explanations for disparate results.
The genesis of this thread was a complaint that “racists” had hijacked a thread on development of countries. I contributed to that hijack by injecting a general opinion that development efforts were affected by the genetic potential of the population being developed, and there ensued a derailing of the thread by arguing whether or not the potential of human groups could be affected by genes. That derailed the whole thread.
It is wrong of you to confer a primary motivation that “blacks are so much inferior.” If, to use my Mbuti example, a poster were to inquire how we could get a development program to help the Mbuti perform in the NFL, it would be a perfectly legitimate point to suggest there may be some genetic disadvantages which should be considered.
It is the charge of racism as a primary cause for underperformance that opens up an examination of whether or not genetic contributions to performance varies by race. When that charge goes away, there will be no reason to defend against it. Currently the default position of US law is that there is no genetic difference between races, and that therefore screening examinations are a priori racially discriminatory if there is too large an adverse impact on a minority group.
You are right that I did not add the disclaimer “immuntable to date.”
Would you mind reminding me which test scores have been equalized? I am (possibly contrary to your opinion) interested in collecting datasets from both sides of the debate.
I take it that posting cites supporting various performance differences among races, posting cites to show that commonly-proposed nurturing differences such as wealth and parental education don’t eliminate test-score differences, posting cites to show that there is genetic variation among races, posting the comment that no cultural explanations have ever been anything but unsupported speculation, pointing out that very directed efforts have been unsuccessful in eliminating those “cultural differences,” and drawing from all this a conclusion that the residual differences are likely to be genetic, constitutes a “flagrant abuse of science” in your egalitarian handbook?
I mean, come on. It may be a totally opposite conclusion from yours. But throwing out “flagrant abuse of science” is, frankly, bullshit rhetoric from one who apparently has appointed herself Guardian.
That highly biased and misleading summary of your position doesn’t accurately represent the facts. For one thing, it’s not true that there’s nothing but speculation supporting the hypothesis that cultural factors may have significant impact on racial differences.
Significant reduction of the black-white test score gap on certain test scores, absence of observed correlation between IQ scores and amount of European genetic ancestry in American blacks, and comparable test scores for black and white pre-adolescents raised by white adults in white communities all constitute evidence for cultural influences on test score differences. When you ignore or dismiss such evidence because it doesn’t conform to your preferred hypothesis, then yes, you are flagrantly abusing science.
But your most flagrant abuse of science takes the form of trying to claim that your preferred set of cites conclusively demonstrates that the current differences must be genetic. Then when you’re pushed to the wall to support such claims with reliable scientific evidence, you backpedal to take refuge in less overstated versions of your position.
Compare the following two statements about this issue that you’ve posted in one and the same thread:
Emphasis added. Those two statements are very different in nature. The latter one is a perfectly reasonable expression of opinion about how you personally interpret results of certain studies to suggest what you consider the most likely outcome for science’s eventual conclusions about race and intelligence.
The former, on the other hand, is a blatantly unscientific and unsupported false assertion that the science on the issue of race and intelligence is already settled, and that the phenomena in question are known to be intrinsically and indisputably genetic. It is, in other words, a lie.
A big part of your problem in these discussions, Chief, is that you keep trying to play bait-and-switch with these two types of statements. You pop up in one place with hyperbolic and unjustified overstated assertions that are not conclusively supported by scientific evidence.
And then when you get shot down by people who are annoyed by such unscientific exaggeration, you come back in another place with a more reasonable and qualified statement of the same position, and pretend that that’s the statement your opponents were objecting to. Then you whine that only irrational fanatical egalitarians could be so contemptuous and closed-minded about your perfectly legitimate hypothesis.
This sort of bait-and-switch game may seem to you like a good way to win arguments, but I don’t think it’s fooling anybody else.
From the link (and already quoted by me before this):
Note that this isn’t a claim that all black-white differences in academic achievement have narrowed over all time intervals in the twentieth century. So it does not contradict your data showing that in certain recent time periods, certain other indicators of academic achievement have not shown decreased black-white differences. Neither of those statements makes the other one “incorrect”.
Honestly, Chief, sometimes I get the impression that the ultimate cause of your difficulties in processing these arguments is simply that you don’t reason very clearly or comprehend what you read very well. It seems to me that I’m frequently having to find data for you that I’ve already cited, point out to you inconsistencies in different statements that you’ve made on the same topic within a short time period, or explain to you fairly straightforward statements about science or statistics that you’ve misinterpreted.
Now, I’m certainly no genius-level thinker myself, and I make plenty of mistakes on my own account. And I don’t usually get the feeling about posters whom I disagree with that the problem is that they just can’t keep up with the reasoning. But—and I know you won’t be offended by this, because you maintain that intelligence is fundamentally genetic and that nobody’s responsible for their genes—sometimes it’s hard to escape the inference that the reason you say this stuff is not because you’re evil or a racist, but rather because at bottom you’re just not all that bright.
Right. The typical SDMB member is just allllllll about the SCIENCE. They just love them some motherfucking SCIENCE.
But show them a whole field of SCIENCE based on observations that are only useful when adjusted (using subjective criteria) and are then fed into models (the parameters of which are selected subjectively) that operates in a political and grant-making environment that only supports those who reach the right answer, and the typical SDMB member buys it hook, line, and sinker.
Also, a general observation: some folks here keep bandying about the concept of “inferiority.” I think we should keep in mind that IQ or g or whatever is just one measure of a person. It is basically the same thing as a person’s shoe size–it says nothing about a person’s worth as a human being in some over-arching moral sense.
Well; let me put it this way, also as gently as possibe: I am certainly not offended if it’s you who are calling me not all that bright.
You have a lovely quality of persistence, but the data you present and floof up to be significant (your score cites, for instance) is weak, vastly in the minority, and culled out by folks desperate to find something so they can pretend there is good data on both sides, and the jury is still out. Meantime, the overwhelming majority of thousands upon thousands of daily exams acrosss the country, not to mention the SAT, MCAT, LSAT and various other college and post-college scores are stubbornly resistant to having the gap eliminated. And the same pattern is repeated the world over, in every culture; every political system; every everything.
Then you take a comment clearly represented as opinion in the middle of a post and juxtapose it with a comment I made less vigorously, and pretend that those somehow represent two waffling opinions from someone too stupid to know what he really thinks. OK; I guess that’s one way to win an argument for which you have such a paucity of data supporting an opposite opinion.
I admire your doggedness but pity the position you find yourself in. It is particularly uncomfortable to have a liberal viewpoint that wants to be egalitarian and have to swallow hard truths, and I hiding behind “we really don’t know” is probably not an unreasonable interim compromise to at least defer a truth you would find to be overwhelmingly supported were it not for the fact that you do not want it to be true. I have not the least doubt your position is driven by hope and politics, and not by science. It is a powerful secondary gain to lead the charge defending the weak, like a knght in shining armour riding to the rescue of either Science or the weak.
And I have no doubt either where the science will take even the slowest of the learners, kicking and hyperbolizing but eventually capitulating. In the interim, I hope you are not waiting for higher mathematics advanced program classrooms to be filled with equally-performing blacks, or perhaps a return of the 1930 Jewish immigrants to the NBA. You may not give a rat’s ass about my opinion, but I don’t need to remind you that it is Mother Nature who does not care about yours.
And germane to a couple comments above, from a 3rd commentary:
“First, nationally representative data on racial and ethnic IQ differences during
the 20th century provide no evidence that the IQ gap has narrowed. Standardized
effect sizes were 1.0 0.2 for both children and adults and for all ages and
decades, averaging 1.02 across 20 samples.
Second, Black–White achievement gaps in the 1971–1999 NAEP Trend
Series were no larger or smaller than g theory would predict. The maximum
expected is 1.20 standard deviation (the size of the Black–White g gap itself), and
the minimum is 0.80 0.04 standard deviation (1.20 multiplied by the IQ–
achievement correlations in core subjects). NAEP gaps narrowed from 1.07
standard deviation in the 1970s to 0.89 in the 1990s when averaged over all three
subjects and ages. Degree of narrowing stalled by the mid-1980s and differed by
subject: 25% in reading (1.06–0.79), 20% in math (1.07– 0.87), and 15% in
science (1.22–1.04). As of 1999, all gaps for 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students
were still near or above the minimum expected (reading—0.80, 0.73, 0.73;
math—0.82, 0.93, 1.06; and science—0.97, 1.06, 1.07).” (p. 313)
and
“One might be able to interpret many of the individual
threads of evidence differently, but it is not clear how culture-only theory
could coherently reinterpret the entire interconnected web of evidence. In fact,
culture-only theory is notable for retreating from its previous failed explanations
into ever-less plausible ones. For example, an early claim, plausible at the time,
was that Blacks’ mental abilities are underestimated because mental tests are
biased against them. Research disconfirmed that claim decades ago.” (p. 315)
(I might add income level and parental education as two more cultural explanations which have fallen.)
I take it that you’ve reviewed the data presented in those sources around intelligence studies and quantitative test scores?
Or were you too lazy (or unwilling) and just tried to present some sort of distracting rhetorical zinger that you are hoping discredits a hundred years of studying intelligence, thousands and thousands of data points, and stands without any significant alternate datasets suggesting that races can be shown to perform equivalently?
See, the dilemma with the Egalitarian crowd is that they are unable to actually equalize performance.
P-E-R-F-O-R-M-A-N-C-E
They have a lot of theories on why performance inequities exist. If you run through the studies I present (and even the NYT book review Kimstu links, to) you might learn how many commonly-held perceptions (performance differences are test biases; wealth-linked; parental education-linked; opportunity-linked…) are completely wrong. You might be surprised to learn what a paucity of success there is on actually eliminating differences by throwing money and programs based on all sorts of hopeful suppositions.
What you never get is any actual elimination of the differences. And the zeal with which the notion we are immutably difference because the difference is innate should give you some reassurance that there is no lack of effort or money or brainpower being spent on chasing the dream that we are going to get everyone performing equally if we can just find the Right Secret to Success.
But hey; have at it pretending proponents of my position rest their case on penis size differences. It should make you feel better and perhaps let you live in Fairyland a while longer.
I’m sure the test scores that Rushton reports are accurate, but he’s got absolutely zero credibility in terms of interpreting data or drawing conclusions from it.
And no, I’m not going to bother reading a study authored by Rushton. I’ve read enough bullshit written by the man that I don’t feel the need to keep an open mind about what he writes.